Draco is also 15 years old. I’ve known enough 15 year old boys who thought violence against their supposed enemies was a really wonderful idea that I won’t take him seriously. He’s just parroting Daddy right now; he doesn’t really know what Voldemort is, just that he is going to be the savior of wizardkind (the proper wizardkind, anyway).
He could easily turn either way once he evaluates his position separate from his father and the values he’s gotten from his family. Right now, he’s just a bigmouthed brat too busy listening to what Daddy has to say to make up his own mind.
i really really doubt that moody, wormtail, padfoot, and prongs were anywhere but gryffindor. think of how often harry, ron, and hermione see people in other houses. they have all their classes, meals, nights, and most leisure time with members of their houses.
however, although it’s not been mentioned, it cannot be argued that no one noticed remus’s disappearances outside of the marauders. snape was ‘very interested in where lupin went every month.’ i’m sure he had a cover story. still…in order to be as close as they were, in the environment they were in, it’s almost necessary that they were in the same house.
and i am really excited for the next book even if only to find out how the hell harry’s got relatives so close by that he’s never met! mark evans must be related to lily and petunia and therefore harry, and he’ll be 11 next year. there must be a reason…but what?
i’ve always been annoyed at how harry never asks anyone about his family, when all these people around him knew his parents and grandparents. while he was raised in the dursley home, meaning questions = bad, he doesnt seem to have many problems asking about his father when he thinks to. now that he has the chance, can’t he find out about his family’s past?
I disagree. He’s been around while innocents have been killed. He was quite fine with the death of Cedric. He was around during the Chamber attacks, and was quite happy with those. He took it upon himself in Prisoner to get a hippogriff killed. He’s acted of his own accord to assist Rita Skeeter is trying to ruin Hagrid’s life. He’s shown not one shred of evidence of being anything other than vile scum. I’ll be very disappointed if he turns out to be anything but bad. Anyone with a track record like he has, still being an asshole halfway through his teens without ever having done a positive thing is extraordinarily unlikely to reform. Furthermore, Rowling has said she is disturbed by the fondness some have for him. She doesn’t feel this way at all about Snape, was in fact hoping for it, but she is downright disturbed that anyone could like Draco. He’s designed to be hated.
Yeah, but we don’t know how the passwords for the houses other than Griffyndor are chosen. For Griffyndor, there’s the comment in PoA that Sir Cadogan who takes over for the Fat Lady kept changing the passwords to whatever he wanted them to be.
I’m doing some thinking about some of the things brought up in this thread, but I’m not ready to comment on them quite yet.
Snape’s job, as we gets hints of in both GoF and OotP is to go to old Death Eaters and try to steer them away from rejoining Voldemort. There’s nothing about him actually being in Voldy’s camp.
Snape is no longer in Voldemort’s good graces. Not only is it strongly implied that he is the one who has left Voldy’s service forever, but Dumbledore announced in the middle of open court that Snape had turned traitor on Voldy: in front of a Death Eater, no less (albiet a post-hoc traitor)! At the very least, if that was not quite a public statement, then at least we know that Fudge knows it, and would most certianly tell Lucius Malfoy about it if asked. So I would say that there is very little chance at all that Snape is undercover with Voldy. It’s evidence to the contrary that’s needed from anyone who says different.
An interesting point about Blaise Zabini potentially being good: names. The other Slytherins mostly have fairly ominous and/or creepy names (Draco) or just plain not-attractive ones (Millicent Bulstrode), except for Pansy, which is just funny.
Blaise, on the other hand, is a Catholic saint. He was an early physician and is credited with miraculously saving a boy who was choking to death on a fish bone. He was martyred by beheading, and because of his miracle is the patron saint of people afflicted by diseases of the throat. On St. Blaise’s day, Catholics have their throats blessed against disease.
Interesting, no? Could Blaise, by way of being the one good Slytherin, save someone at a crucial moment? Could he be a martyr?
Another interesting factoid: when Blaise was captured so that he could be executed, they found him out in a cave tending to sick wild animals. He was known for being empathetic and having a special relationship with animals.
So - was it Blaise who could see the thestrals?
On a slightly separate point - the clue book makes something of the fact that Tonks says “my Head of House” didn’t make her a prefect, without saying “Professor McGonagall, our fellow OOPer,” or saying what other house she was in. Even though she’s okay and Andromeda was the nice cousin (and Tonks is part-Muggle), could she have been in Slytherin? Snape doesn’t tolerate horseplay much more than McGonagall does - and Draco the Prefect’s brand of rule-breaking is somewhat more subtle than I feel Tonks’s would have been.
He’s been around, but he hasn’t been around. Yes, he was in the same general location, but he was never really in contact with it. I really don’t think he honestly gets the full concept of death yet and he won’t until he is actually faced with it or something else horribly nasty.
Also, I don’t think he had any real feelings about Cedric. He didn’t know Cedric – a much older boy in another house – and he did, at least, stand in acknowledgment of him at the end of year feast (he did not stand for Harry, though). The only reason he would think about Cedric at all, aside from the Voldemort connection, is as a weakness for Harry. A sore spot in the enemy…
He’s trying to get revenge on people he sees as the enemy. Very immature, but not too evil…until the 5th book, which I forgot to take into account earlier. He’s obviously growing more towards vile scum there, but he’s still just mostly acting on petty schoolboy issues (except for the end of the book! That’ll be something to watch and definitely a crucial turning point in his life…getting rid of that direct influence)
I too would be extremely disappointed if Draco suddenly became Mr. Sweetness and Sunshine, but I could see him realizing that he’s messed up beyond majorly and turning his life around. But that would definitely have to come after he’s experienced the real world and the ramifications of his beliefs instead of the completely unrealistic situation of school and family. It’s not going to happen tomorrow or maybe even by the end of the series. But it could happen…even if it won’t.
I dunno: his being gleeful at Cedric’s death pretty much dumped him down the crapper for me. That kid has way more serious issues than just being a brat who listens to his father overmuch.
Very true, good point. Though I still think that given that the house was founded on the principle that only wizarding familes or good breeding should be taught at all, the house probably retains that ethic.
However, was Voldemort a Slytherin? Do we know that for sure? Because if so, he clearly wasn’t a pureblood (and this seems to be a rather sore subject for his supporters).
I wonder who Snapes’ parents were? We’ve heard that most of the purebloods are related, but Snape wasn’t on Sirius’ little family tree was he? Not that there aren’t plenty more pureblood families out there, but so far all we’ve seen of his origins are his arguing parents.
A. I think Draco will continue to be bad. He may do a good deed to further cement Rowling’s new lesson that things aren’t always black and white, but he’ll still be the evil foil to Harry.
B. I think the Marauders were all Gryffendor’s. It would difficult for them to know of Lupin’s afflication otherwise, I think.
He wasn’t gleeful originally. All he did was whisper something to his friends when Dumbledore informed the school that Cedric was killed by Voldemort.
He did bring it up to Harry on the train home at the end of GoF, but that was really a minor mention:
“‘They’ll be the first to go, now the Dark Lord’s back! Mudbloods and Muggle-lovers first! Well – second – Diggory was the f–’” (pg. 729 in the American hardcover)
I still don’t think he gets it…at least, not then. How many teenagers really understand death? Harry’s not the norm.
I’m not trying to defend Draco – I dislike him immensely. Yes, he definitely has some issues tied to his family and upbringing and saying that he’s just a brat is an oversimplification on my part. But still, compared to the other villains of the books, he’s an obnoxious little kid, not dangerous vile scum…at least, he wasn’t dangerous until the end of the 5th book. That was personal and he’ll grow up fast as a result.
I did note today, however, that Draco in GoF does warn Hermy to stay away from the Death Eaters at the World Cup fracas. He’s as nasty as possible about it of course, but it is a bit odd that he’d be giving her what is, essentially, good advice, albiet borne out of the nastiest of impulses to demean her.
It’s been suggested before, based on more than just this, but he may, despite all his open loathing for her and her mudbloodiness, have a thing for Hermy.
Just like I think, and this is pure speculation here, that Snape probably had a thing for Lily at some point (and maybe more: it certainly would explain even better his deep hatred of James if James stole away the woman he loved, Harry being the product of that union)
More Snape angles/research: Crouch was present when Dumbledore annoucned that Snape had betrayed Voldemort, and no doubt Crouch knew much more about this in general. Now, if you assume that Voldy interrogated the imperioused Crouch much like his son interrogated Moody, then it seems pretty obvious that, even if Voldy had not figured it out before, he would have found out that Snape was a traitor. So I really think the possibility of Snape being able to go back into Voldy’s camp to be a double agent AGAIN is quite remote.
However, I did note something I had missed before, that everyone else probably already knew. There were more Death Eaters at the big DE party in GoF than were mentioned by name or even mentioned specifically at all (the book says that there were many Voldy passed by without talking to or about). I forgot that, which is why I assumed that Snape had to have been accounted for, and thus must have been the one who has “left forever.” Snape well COULD HAVE BEEN one of the unamed Death Eaters. But I highly, highly, highly doubt it, given my conviction that Dumbledore really does have good reason to trust Snape, and Snape really did turn traitor, and Voldy knows it.
On another Weasley note, however… how the heck did George and Fred know what would happen at the World Cup? Indeed, in that book, they seem to make a LOT of speculative statements that then go and turn out to come true. Are these kids just lucky? Or did they bet their life savings on the World Cup because they knew it was a sure thing? Do they have a Time Turner?
And on Time Turners… why hasn’t Rowling explained more clearly just why they can’t be used more widely, and what happens if one is “seen” (it’s implied, since the world doesn’t blow up when Harry sees himself, that this problem has more to do with the Ministry cracking down on Time Turners than anything else). They certainly seem like something that’s TOO powerful and obvious as a solution to dire situations. Why doesn’t it at least even occur to Harry that he might use a Time Turner to go back and save Sirius yet again, even if he decides that it would be too risky or unworkable? I mean, there’s a whole room full of them right next to where Sirius died for goodness sakes.
Yeah, the Time-Turner thing does strike me as a big loose end at the end of Book 5 … although, if my pet theory about how the entire series is going to end is correct, it just means that she’s saving that idea up for an even bigger payoff. Heh heh.
Well, I dunno: she can be a little sloppy with things like this, unless she’s ever going to revist things like “why the heck did fake Moody engineer a big elaborate plan all designed to manipulate Harry into touching a particular object, when for all we know, it could have been ANY object that Moody could have had Harry touch at any time: ‘Hey Harry, hand me that teacup…’”
Though this has been beaten to near-death, I think it’s certain that Black was in Gryffindor. In OOtP, Lupin says he was make prefect (over Sirius and James) in the school’s hopes that he could keep them in line.
Theories are well and good, but the question is whether she’ll definitively lay them to rest at any point. And the real problem is not that there couldn’t be an explanation, but that, like the Time Turner thing, the jarring problem is that the characters don’t seem to recognize it at the time. That said, I don’t think, even including those I read in that thread, that I’ve heard any truly convincing theories that a) make sense with what Rowling had already revealed about the magical world (i.e., the good writing trope where if a gun is to play a part in the second act, it must be presented in the first act) or even b) make much sense at all.